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mlashley's review against another edition
dark
informative
sad
fast-paced
2.75
Overall the book was really good but it seemed to spend a lot more time on the heroine traffickers than it did on drug companies that created the base of addicts that would go on to abuse black tar heroine.
oxnard_montalvo's review against another edition
3.0
More like 3.75 stars. Dreamland has a lot of scope; we start off in Mexico, looking at the socio-economic conditions in one town that helped foster the rise of heroin dealing as a cottage industry. The methods and model of the US based dealers and their unique customer service approach that hadn't been done before in street dealing, or at least not done on such a widespread level.
Quinones writes lucidly and clearly lays out how all the disparate links of economic struggles, social poverty, isolated communities and prescription painkillers come together to fuel the rise of heroin use.
He does tend to repeat the same points every few pages and I felt the book could easily have been a 1/4 or even a 1/3 shorter without losing any of the heft. It was feeling particularly bloated towards the end. And one thing I felt was implied throughout but only briefly made explicit was how it was only when the opioid crisis begin touching the fringes of the white wealthy upper-middle classes was it deemed to be a startling problem. Only then was it seen to be a crisis worth responding to.
If the opioid use and deaths among white users skyrocketed, I wish he had included some statistics about use/death/recovery rates of black addicts. It's barely mentioned despite saying how heroin use had been traditionally seen as a 'city' problem and using this idea to highlight just how shocking it is to see heroin in predominantly white suburbs. So while, yes, heroin use, painkiller addiction and economic stagnation has devastated rural communities, they are also the focal points and beneficiaries of new methods of recovery and treatment.
What I want to know is how does the crisis compare elsewhere? I get that the focus of the book is to specifically look at rural communities, but I don't think that story would have been undermined with the inclusion of statistics and stories from black users.
Quinones writes lucidly and clearly lays out how all the disparate links of economic struggles, social poverty, isolated communities and prescription painkillers come together to fuel the rise of heroin use.
He does tend to repeat the same points every few pages and I felt the book could easily have been a 1/4 or even a 1/3 shorter without losing any of the heft. It was feeling particularly bloated towards the end. And one thing I felt was implied throughout but only briefly made explicit was how it was only when the opioid crisis begin touching the fringes of the white wealthy upper-middle classes was it deemed to be a startling problem. Only then was it seen to be a crisis worth responding to.
If the opioid use and deaths among white users skyrocketed, I wish he had included some statistics about use/death/recovery rates of black addicts. It's barely mentioned despite saying how heroin use had been traditionally seen as a 'city' problem and using this idea to highlight just how shocking it is to see heroin in predominantly white suburbs. So while, yes, heroin use, painkiller addiction and economic stagnation has devastated rural communities, they are also the focal points and beneficiaries of new methods of recovery and treatment.
What I want to know is how does the crisis compare elsewhere? I get that the focus of the book is to specifically look at rural communities, but I don't think that story would have been undermined with the inclusion of statistics and stories from black users.
emcp's review
informative
slow-paced
3.75
The story is not told exactly chronologically or in an organized fashion — I know why, because the story of the opioid epidemic is not linear. Sometimes the way the book is written (jumping around from Purdue to the Xalisco Boys to pain research and back again) works and makes sense; sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s overly repetitive; sometimes the author expects you to remember something from 20 chapters back. I also was irritated by his use of language (he threw “junkie” around constantly, which I believe you should not use casually unless you yourself are a drug user or in recovery) and wtf was that afterword? That said, the book WAS very informative and well-researched and I’m glad I read it.
kaitays's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I love the subject because we always here about the epidemic, but not how it came to be and who was affected. I read it for a class but it was beyond interesting how the story was told. You can tell it was well-researched and I liked how it was narrated.
enterprisingyoungman's review
3.0
Informative but repetitive. Less a scientific lens than I'd prefer.